We went from celebrating the participation of the people in case studies to needing to deepen the schemes for comprehension of the processes for broadening democracy which allow a compared analysis and the socialization of institutional and public learning. Thus, the part of the observing and analytical professional meets problems when developing actions of recognition and naming the world through science. In this work, we use the idea of the "newcomer" (M Fernandez) for questioning the situation of the foreignness of the investigator in comprehending and comparatively studying practices which are situated in a double dimension: the legitimacy of the knowledge which crosses the investigation, and the insertion of the otherness of the investigator in the processes of self-comprehension of the collectives.
Public participation; Comparative method; Comprehension; Dialogue of knowledge; Active-research